Prairie Song

This is a poem I found in a book at the Et Cetera Shop in Hutchinson. We're having some wind today. It seems to me that we don't have the strong summer winds as often as we used to.

This poem by Mildred McKenzie Johnson is one person's view of the winds on the flat prairie.





If you grow with the wind you must go with the wind.
You will meet it in strange, unlikely places -
A frond will stir on a patio fern
And gone is the laughter, gone are the faces -
You are miles away on a prairie hill,
Watching the weave of the buffalo grass,
Hearing the caw of a thieving crow,
Scanning the sky as the wild geese pass.

If you run with the wind you are one with the wind.
You smile, you listen to party chatter,
Till a high voice calls from a chimney flue -
Then the words will fade to a half-heard patter,
And you are seeing a blizzard swoop
With fearful strength down a barren land,
While sabers slash at the windowpane
In the wild assault of the wind-command.

For the song of the prairie is echoing yet -
If you grew with the wind you can never forget.
-Mildred McKenzie Johnson